Older Samsung phones may have an issue with swelling batteries, according to new claims from an established YouTuber.
Arun Maini, also known as Mrwhosetheboss, is a popular tech YouTuber with 11.7 million subscribers. He has just issued a video outlining a problem he’s noticed with a number of his older Samsung phones.
Affected phones are experiencing battery swelling, causing the body of the phone to distort and even break apart. The initial list of phones in his extensive collection to have suffered from such battery swelling included the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, the Galaxy S6, and the Galaxy S10.
Upon further investigation, this list eventually expanded to include the Galaxy S8, the Galaxy S10e, the Galaxy S10 5G, and even the expensive (and really not very old) Galaxy Z Fold 2.
His Samsung Galaxy S20 FE was also found to have experienced swelling, albeit much less dramatically than the others.
It’s worth noting that the UK (where Mrwhosetheboss is based) had recently experienced a severed heatwave. However, what’s similarly worth noting is that the issue appears exclusive to Samsung.
The YouTuber demonstrates how all of his older phones are stored in exactly the same way, at the same temperature, and in the same powered down state. All of the older phones from other brands that he checked (including Apple, Google, and Asus) remained in one piece, and powered on without issue.
Having tweeted out about the issue, Samsung swiftly responded and took the phones back for analysis. Having not received a response in 50 days, Maini noticed that another prominent YouTuber, Matt Ansini, had experienced a similar issue with his Samsung Galaxy S7.
Indeed, Matt observed that every Samsung phone of three years old and up in his collection had experienced this battery swelling problem. Or, in other words, every Samsung phone in their collection prior to the Galaxy S20.
The king of tech YouTubers, Marques Brownlee, also had his say, claiming that the only smartphone battery swelling issues he every encounters are Samsung phones. The popular JerryRigEverything has also corroborated these reports.
This is all still far from a scientific look into the issue, of course, but there’s enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that there might be something amiss with older Samsung devices, and a genuine risk of swelling batteries.
Those with long memories will recall that this isn’t the first issue Samsung has had with its smartphone batteries. Back in 2016, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was banned from airlines due to its nasty habit of exploding, prompting a general recall.
It’ll be interesting to see how Samsung responds to these potentially incendiary claims. We’ll let you know as and when we hear more.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
